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I recently read Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen. It is an interesting book touching on many subjects, including how the internet might be changing the culture, and on the neurological roots of aesthetic opinions. In it are two interesting quotes about autism-spectrum disorders on page thirty-three.
After every election, the questions I usually hear from half of the electorate are: What is wrong with people? How can there be so many idiots? With everything that was going on, how was it not a landslide? There is a lot of mystery not only of what drives voting behavior, but how people think in the most basic ways. There is a huge lack of understanding between different groups of people. Not only do people not understand why more people don’t think like them, they find time and time again that predictions based on how they think others think are spectacularly wrong. The truth is none of us even knows how others think, let alone why. Unfortunately, I’m still working on the answers myself, but in this post I describe several theories I have heard. Discussing them ought to help point us in the right direction.
Sometimes the arguments people make cut both ways. What is especially amusing is when they seem completely oblivious to the irony of it.
I have a question today that I think boils down into the simplest terms most of the issues we face as a nation this century. To explain, I will use an analogy.
A few weeks ago I heard yet another way to classify people as either liberal or conservative. The person I was listening to said that liberals are those who worry too much what others think about their actions, whereas conservatives are those that do what needs to be done no matter how upset people get.
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was once married to a woman named Cheri. In 1994, she left him and moved to California. Three years later, she came back and they remarried. They are still together. Since Mr. Daniels is a public official, and his name was once even floated as a possible presidential candidate, there have been speculations as to his character. Does this divorce-remarriage incident tell us anything?
Most people are moderates and don’t feel we live in a particularly divided country. The media, of course, frames everything in terms of left and right and has to find ways to classify people as one or the other. Whether someone is a conservative or liberal then, depends on how the issues are framed.
It has been asked why liberals are angrier than conservatives. I’m not sure if the premise of the question is completely true, but conservatives have been quick to offer up theories.
There has been talk of the EPA wanting to regulate CO2 emissions as an impetus to pass cap and trade as a less costly alternative. Why would the EPA want to regulate CO2? Is it poisonous?
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AuthorHi, I'm Dan. I like chocolate, hiking, and politics. Archives
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